After lunch they went back to it. The sewing machine was going back together with only a little trouble, but it meant a lot to Delia and each sticking screw bothered her. So she concentrated on continuing her conversation with Sarah.
About three that afternoon, Delia brought the whole question of whether this was a game or for real to a head.
“How do you form a company, Sarah?” she asked. “When Ray set up the storage lot all it amounted to was registering at the county courthouse and getting a tax number. But the county courthouse is three hundred years away in another universe. So how do we do it in the here and now?”
Somewhat to the surprise of the group, each member had decided that they really wanted to do this. Most of the hesitation had been the belief that they would not be allowed to—that the project would be declared frivolous, and they would be told not to waste time. Or that it would be declared too important to be left in the hands of children, and taken away from them.
Brent and Trent wanted to do it because really making sewing machines offered a more concrete outlet for their creative urges. Sarah, because this was the sort of thing that Grantville needed. David and Delia, because the family needed a source of steady income and neither had that much confidence in the longterm outlook of the storage lot. It was running at a loss at the moment and might well go broke within the next year or so. A storage container is, in its way, a luxury—and one that people apparently could not afford, at least for now.
“To form a company,” Sarah said, after they got back to the question, “is pretty standard. I think. I’d have to check with Mom, but I think it’s just a contract between someone and the government, or several people and the government. That is what the registering Mr. Higgins did at the county courthouse was. A corporation is more complex. I don’t know which we need but I can find out. What we need to do, is work out how much everyone is putting in, in labor and money. Then figure out who owns how much of the company and register it that way. The thing is, this is going to take a lot of money.”
At that point every one got quiet. The kids because they didn’t have any money to speak of; Delia, because she wanted the kids to realize that they really weren’t in a position to just build the sewing machines in their back yard, that the game was starting to get real. Delia wanted to give them a chance to back away without losing face. So she waited a bit, to let it sink in, watching.
Then, liking what she saw: “How much money?”
“I don’t know. Mom says that it’s a law of nature that every thing costs more and takes longer then you expect.”
“We have around a hundred parts,” Trent interjected. “Some can be hand-made, some will take special tools, and some will take machines. Some must be finely tooled. I have the numbers right here.”
“But that doesn’t tell us what we need to know,” Sarah pointed out. “At least, not all of it. How long will it a take a blacksmith to make a part, how much will it cost? The only real way to find out is to go find a blacksmith and ask him, and you know some are gonna lie, and others are gonna get it wrong, because they think it needs fancy work, or because they don’t understand how precise it needs to be. So the only real way to find out for sure how much it will cost to make a sewing machine part, is to make one. Actually, to make several. Until then we’re guessing.”
“Well, a guess is better than nothing,” said Delia “What if we go through Trent’s list one item at a time and make our best guess at the cost of each item?”
The rest of the afternoon, as Brent put the sewing machine back together, the others went though the list of parts and guessed.